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Monday, 8 October 2012

Drawing curves with EQ7 - tutorial

I was planning to write another Electric Quilt 7 tutorial for a long time. This time on drawing curves (very useful feature I have to admit).

Last time I didn't really finish any new project that I could show you now (I have one EPP finished which I will show on 27th of October, I've made some purses for my shop but don't have photos yet and I had a trial week in a new job :) ), I decided that it's a good time for writing a tutorial :)

First of all, you will need an idea which kind of block you want to sew. You can of course draw the block templates by hand (it's especially easy when you have some special curved rulers), at the end just adding the seam allowance to the pieces. No problem. I was drawing curves like that, before I learned how to do it in EQ7. But it's (i) time consuming, (ii) might be not really so acurate and (iii) did I mention time consuming? I always hated drawing seam allowances around each part; it was taking ages.

As in my first EQ7 tutorial, in this one I will base my work on an already existing picture. I was drawing 2 different blocks with curved pieces in Photoshop to show you how EQ7 works:

Be sure to choose 'Snap to lines and arcs of drawing' button as well as 'Snap to nodes of drawing' (this one is especially important if you are drawing multiple arcs in one shape - more details later) on the top (right) sidebar.

Choose Arc tool [2]:

Left click at the point you want to start drawing curve [1] and drag the line (left mouse button pressed all the time) to the end point [2]. Now you have drawn a curved line, which is anchored to the edges of your block. What you still need is to adjust the shape of the curve to your needs.

Click 'Shape' tool [1] and left click on the curves line which you want to edit. Two dotted lines meeting in one point will show. Left click on that point [2] and - pressing the left mouse button all the time - start to move the point around. You will see how the shape of the arc will change:

If you are happy with the result and the arc matches the shape of the curve on your picture (for those who do not use picture as a template - you can just play with the curves' shapes as you like), just stop pressing left mouse button. The curve will stay as it is:

When you press Color Tab (bottom of the window) you can see that drawing the curve was succesful:

Continue with other curves in the same way. For printing the pattern (more details on this topic in the first EQ7 titorial) I choose or 'Foudation pattern' or 'Templates' (if you choose 'Foundation pattern' you have a possibility to print mirrored templates while when selecting 'Templates', the templates will be not mirrored). Of course you cannot foundation (paper) piece curved templates. Such option of printing gives you just chance to get mirrored templates.

But what if you drag at the arc and it just doesn't want to create a line in the shape you like? Method shown above works perfectly for gentle curves.

What works the best for me is drawing multiple arcs to create one shape. How many arcs? You just have to try. Usually 3-5 work for me.

Remember about top right buttons - 'Snap to lines and arcs of drawing' and 'Snap to nodes of drawing.

Draw the first arc:

Second arc will start where the first one ended, the third where the second ended (and in this case, will anchor te shape to the edge of the block):

Click on 'Color' Tab to see if your drawing worked (sometimes it happens, that some lines do not snap where they should; I click on 'Color' tab several times while I draw; it helps correct mistakes quickly):

Draw all the shapes in the same way. As you can see, for creating one curve I've drawn 3 arcs, for another - 4 arcs.

Hope the tutorial was a bit helpful :) If you have any questions, I will do my best to help you.

Thank you so much for your Tutorials on EQ7, very helpful!!! I am just beginning to teach myself how to EQ7 and I am trying to figure out how to get my designs onto my blog to show my followers, any suggestions as to where to look to learn the process?

Hi there. Your tutorials are brilliant - clear and easy to follow. EQ7 should so commission you! I am working on a project at the moment which, if you were up for it, would really help me if you could do a tutorial on adding sashing to rectangle blocks. I have studied the help menu (which described the process as "easy" and "simple") but when they say press "ok" I couldn't find an ok button; or they would describe a process but not show the image or button to press.